And also...

1) I forgot to mention the name of the purse pattern was "Zip it up" by Indygo Junction. I got the pattern and fabric at Fabric.com.

2) I missed two nights of 10 minute quilting. One for Chalicat's bachelorette party (worth the loss) and once because I got too caught up in blogging and then because I am no longer able to stay up late I crashed and went to bed.

3) Yesterday I jogged just a smidge over 3 miles! Hurray! I haven't done that since the Fall. Though tonight it is cold outside and I just don't feel like subjecting myself to the cold anymore after an hour of sitting in it for T-ball.

4) I won a drawing over at Quilt Otaku!!! I guessed correctly that she is having a boy. Congratulations to her, and may she have a wonderful pregnancy with a safe, healthy delivery, and a terrific addition to her family!

Promised Pictures

Hey, every-bud-e! Guess what. I finished the purse. Yes, I know my goal was to finish the baby blanket. We all know how good I am at making and not meeting crafty goals though. I still might make the blanket by the end of the month. Well I might finish the (hand) quilting on it but it will still need a binding.

Without further ado, a photo!

The pocket looks a little cock-eyed in the photo but I think it looked ok on the real thing. I wasn't real happy with how the pocket ended up seam-wise but I got tired of messing with it. I just wanted to finish a project!
And here is The Boy turning 6 the other day. That strange looking cake is a Y-wing fighter from Star Wars. He insisted that he must have this cake. I baked a cake in a 9x11 inch glass baking pan and The Husband cleverly cut it up and assembled it into a passable space ship. The Boy appeared only minorly impressed until guests came to the party and then he was all about his Y-Wing cake. The Husband tried very hard to get him to choose an easier theme, but he just kept saying he would like that kind for a later birthday. He was all the way up to his 12th birthday cake theme before The Husband gave up and decided he must do the Y-Wing. (Which, I don't know if it ever even appears in any of the movies!)

That's The Husband filming in the background and of course The Boy blowing out the candles, and The Girl is in blue next to him.

Here is The Boy and me at Chuck E. Cheese post-ticket frenzy on his first full 6-year-old day. You can also see The Girl's feet there by my hand. He decided that each of them would get a Lik-M-Aid packet, and with the remainder he got 4 mini-Tootsie Pops. The Girl got rubber o-ring bracelets with her remainder. Remember those? Ah, the memories...though I actually hated them as a kid myself. I didn't like them because they were trendy.

Crazy

The 10-minutes of quilting a day is working out pretty well. I only have 8 or 9 more motifs to finish quilting and then I can bind & label the baby quilt and be done. Well I do have to make the binding, too.

A friend of ours has a little one turning 3 in May and I was thinking of making her a special nap quilt but then I remembered that a) I'm crazy if I think I can complete it, and b) I haven't worked on The Girl's or The Boy's quilt in ages. Also I have 10 pillowcases still to be sewn for the guild service project by May.

And for the record, I am a little crazy whether or not I think I can complete a nap quilt in time.

To illustrate this craziness: I made homemade laundry soap. Yup, that's right. Soap for washing clothes. Here is the recipe, which I saw easily at least a dozen places so I'm not going to credit anyone for it. Do a google search on "homemade laundry soap" to get a variety.

1 cup of Fels Naptha laundry bar soap, grated
1/2 cup of Oxy-clean or Washing Soda (not baking soda)
1/2 cup of Borax

After the bar soap is grated, you run it through a food processor to chop it into little teeny pieces, almost like a powder. Or if your food processor has a grating attachement or blade just use that. Then you mix it with the other two. That's it! Use a tablespoon per load.

I found the Fels Naptha to have a pretty strong scent. But I did wash a few loads with my new soap and not only did the stuff come out feeling and looking clean, but the overpowering scent was pretty much gone and it just smelled...well, clean. Hurray! It only cost me $2.24 to make enough for 32 loads of laundry...that's only 7 cents a load! Wow!

What's really awesome about it is supposedly it is way better for the environment than traditional laundry soap. I was using Seventh Generation liquid soap and I think last time I bought it I spent 10 or 11 dollars for 32 loads...so I could wash roughly four loads for the cost of the commercial stuff or make it myself. hmm. The agony of the decision.

Oh, and I also read some places that you could use Ivory soap or Zote (? never heard of it) soap instead of the Fels Naptha.

I am also still working on the purse. The main construction is finished. I have to sew up the turning hole in the inner lining and add an embellishment. The pattern suggests an oversized button but I think I will do a little pocket instead. I wasn't planning for it to be lined or anything but I made one that I was going to sew on and when I pinned it to the purse I could see the lines on the bag fabric showing through. Well now, we can't be happy with that! So I'm going to try one more time. Why not? I still have plenty of fabric. It's nice to make a functional fabric object with such a small investment in fabric. Even a little dress or something for The Girl takes more than this.

Next time I post I hope to have pictures!

10 minute goal

This is the fabric for the baby quilt I've been working on. It's a wee bit blurry and you can barely see the quilting. I was a little naughty and didn't baste it and now I am producing some minor wrinkles around the edges. I figured, oh, it's small, it doesn't need basting in a hoop! Wrong answer. I'm making stead progress, though. Hopefully soon I will be binding that sucker!

I also started working on my new purse. I cut out all of the pieces and bought a zipper for it today. With any luck I'll be able to work on it tonight post-kiddie bedtime, jog 10 minutes of quilting & shower. Yeah, I'm probably not going to get to work on it.

Oh and I see I didn't get any bites on the Pay it Forward. Not to be selfish, but I'm kinda glad. Last night at the guild meeting I volunteered to sew pillowcases for the hospital and on top of all of my other stuff...I just probably would have taken years to get a home made giftie out.

Last chance for Pay it Forward!

Tomorrow is your last chance to sign up for Pay it Forward! This will be an easy payment for me if nobody signs up. He.

Laura over at Quilting Diva issued a challenge last month to quilt every day for ten minutes. Well, I missed it last month but I'm going to try it for (ahem, the rest of) this month. She had a post today showing some links from others who took the challenge and what they accomplished. For now I would be happy to accomplish finishing up that baby quilt. I thought I could whip that up in a few weeks but those few weeks have quickly multiplied. I hope 10 minutes a day will have it done by the end of April so that I can finally ship it off. And hopefully that trip to the post office will see Joyce's giftie off, too!

So April goal: finish that baby quilt, in 10 minutes a day!

In other sewing news...I bought some really cute fabric to make a purse. The fabric and pattern both arrived yesterday and I am thrilled with the look of the fabric. The line it was from was called Ginger, I think...maybe from Michael Miller? I had also decided I was going to make a dress and I got fabric for a pattern I already had, too. The fabric though doesn't seem to have the right hand for a dress. It seems more like a short or capri weight to me. So I am thinking on it. I guess that will teach me to buy fabric over the internet for a purpose besides quilting.

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts, and one called Sew Forth Now has caught my attention. It is mostly about fashion sewing and hence the inspiration to do a bag and a dress. Every episode she interviews someone and she has had some really interesting guests. You can catch it on iTunes or have a look at her blog. She is having an anniversary contest at the moment so if you're looking for prize potential stop over.

Sigh, my last day of being 33....